Canepa: Chargers just can't line up

Injuries may have withered their roster and driven the decimated Chargers to the physical cliff, but it figured the Carolina Panthers lacked depth perception _ or any kind of perception. They came in here nearing Christmas with four wins. They left with five. Easy.

A lot we know, a lot we knew.

You never can predict how a gaggle of players following lame ducks are going to react from one week to the next, whether they can remain in a row.

That we now know.

Judging by the Chargers’ resounding victory last week in Pittsburgh, even the Vegas oddsboys _ the smartest people on earth _ thought San Diego would take Carolina, despite the Panthers’ noshing on the Falcons that same day.

A lot they knew.

The Chargers can’t win this way. That they won in Pittsburgh seemed even more astonishing after Carolina’s easy 31-7 handling of them Sunday before thousands of vacant chairs in Qualcomm. The Steelers, with the top defense in the NFL, should be ashamed of themselves.

The Panthers marched and scored a touchdown on their first possession. They then made it 14-0 shortly after the football seemingly covered with lard slipped out of unhurried (for once) quarterback Philip Rivers’ hand and the visitors recovered at the San Diego 21.

As the first quarter neared its end, Panthers’ quarterback Cam Newton tossed a short pass that was tipped by linebacker Jared Johnson _ tipped right into the hands of tailback DeAngelo Williams, who took it 45 yards for another score. Even when they made a play they couldn’t make a play.

Down 21-love, and with all the new people on the offensive line having to battle Carolina’s stout front four, the Chargers had a better chance of winning an Oscar than this game. It became impossible. Norv Turner’s game plan became kindling. He was forced to play give-up football, dink here, dink there, and Carolina, despite having a bad pass defense, found the pickings easy.

“There weren’t a lot of places to go with it quick, either,” said Rivers, who remarkably was able to walk without a cane.

We saw almost nothing but short stuff run by Norv to protect Rivers, who now finds himself nearing the completion of the first losing season in a life in charge. Not that it did much good. Rivers was sacked six times. He fumbled four times and lost two. It’s hard to remember San Diego playing a worst first half against a bad team at home.

It wasn’t as though Norv played this game not to lose, but to not get anyone seriously injured. And that happened anyway when starting tailback Ryan Mathews left the game early in the second quarter with yet another (other) broken clavicle. But even Turner admitted Mathews wouldn’t have made much difference. The run had to be abandoned. The game should have been abandoned.

“Once you get to 14-0 it just maximized the matchup in a negative manner in terms of what we had with our offensive line and their front,” Norv said. “It was fairly obvious we struggled to do much with that matchup … We just weren’t able to overcome it.